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#17
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Win 7 Startup Problems
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On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:45:06 -0400, Paul wrote: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , writes: [] I took your advice and tested the memory. [and it's OK.] So I think the next thing is to replace the hard disk. I'd like your opinion on which way would insure the best result. The hard disk is 1TB with the System Reserved partitions plus Drives C:, D:, and E:. I have an identical new unused 1TB hard disk to replace the old one. My first thought, due to past experience, was to use the Windows 7 DVD to format and install Win 7 and to use it to create the other 2 partitions. Then I'd Restore the MR Image I made more than 2 weeks before the symptoms appeared. (I have older ones too, if necessary.) Which partitions did you image to make that image? If it was at least the hidden and C: partitions, then I don't think there's any need to format: restoring from the image is likely to create them anyway. And, if you're sure that image is free of the problem, restoring from it is going to be _much_ quicker than installing 7, doing all the updates, installing other software you had installed, and tweaking both the OS and the other software to how you like it. (I'm assuming you have the Macrium CD to boot from, and the image on a drive which the PC when booted from the CD can see.) You have nothing to lose by trying it, anyway, other than time! That is to say, put in your new unused drive, connect the drive [presumably an external drive accessed via USB?] with the image on, put in the Macrium boot CD, and boot; then, when it has booted, select the image to restore from, and the (new) drive to restore to, then do it, then shut down, remove the CD and image drive, and boot to see what happens. I suspect you'll find you have the partitions you included when you made that image. If that didn't include D: and E:, then their space will probably be unallocated on the drive. If that's so, I'd use the W7 utility at that stage to allocate them, then restore from them ... Then I'd take previously made images of D: and E: and restore them to the new hard disk. I feel pretty confident about this method. ... like that. (I'm not even sure you have to allocate them beforehand, or whether just restoring the D: and E: images would create them anyway. I just didn't want them to restore over the C: you'd just restored.) I've never used MR Cloning, but after looking at the manual that might be ok but I have a concern about the possibility of bringing something unwanted from the old (bad?) hard disk over to the new one. Wondering what you think, or have experienced. I've only used MR cloning once, and it went without a hitch; however, that was just to go from a drive I had no concerns about to a larger one. (After the cloning, I had the partitions - at the sizes - I had on the smaller one, with the rest unallocated; I just did some moving about, resizing, etc., using the normal W7 utility, to use all of the new disc.) However, I'm with you - if there's a chance there might be something rotten in the state of Denmark on your existing disc, I'd say "restore" from known good images to your new disc. Nothing to lose (except time) by trying, anyway! I would first examine the MRIMG file, to see what's been captured in it. If it only held a DATA partition for example, then we'd need to install Windows 7 on the disk too perhaps. Knowing what is inside the backup, is critical. If it includes System Reserved and C: , then chances are a simple "restore to new hard drive" from the MRIMG, is sufficient. Macrium has options to let you "look inside" an MRIMG. From the Restore menu, you should be able to Browse for MRIMG files. And the nice thing is, you can unplug the old drive (with the power off), plug in the new restored drive, and it should boot off the two-week-old image. And you have your choice of places to work. The new hard drive could be connected to a fully working machine, and restored in there. As long as you're careful not to overwrite the wrong disk drive. If you have a Macrium Rescue CD, then you don't actually need a Windows OS drive plugged into the machine where the restore is being done. New_Drive Backup_holding_Drive Optical drive (boots Macrium CD) That's enough to kick off the preparation of the New_Drive. Do not boot from the New_Drive, until it's reinstalled in the suspect machine, and it is by itself. Then, give it a shot and see what happens. You can bring over any left-over data files from the old disk later, as the need (or capability) arises. Paul Thanks to both of you. To answer some of your questions: The only partitions I image routinely is the System Reserved and Drive C: in one image (Partitions required to backup and restore Windows). This is what I would use to restore from. I keep these MR images on a separate physical drive in this computer and put a copy on an external USB HD for extra safety. The image I would make before starting would be Drive D: (lots of data and saved stuff). Drive E: would be easy to just backup somewhere else. I wasn't sure if the MR restore from image will create at least the System Reserved and Drive C: partitions automatically. I'm going to try that, as soon as I'm sure I have everything ready. I will disconnect or remove the existing (bad?) HD and install the new blank one in its place. Then boot the MR Rescue Disk to restore using the 02/25/18 MR image stored on Drive H: (physically different from the old HD). After booting the new disk I should be able to create the partitions D: and E: and restore them Hope to get to that tomorrow. Will let yo know how it goes. Thank You for your help! DC You can restore directly to a new hard drive, with no preparation of the new drive at all. The restore process creates the partitions first, then fills them up. ******* There was one older Asus motherboard, which could be "upset" by a new (blank) hard drive. It checked sector zero (the MBR), and if the MBR was not initialized, the BIOS would freeze and not boot. Needless to say, you need a second computer, to work with such a beast in the house. (You'd fix up the hard drive in a second computer, just enough so it wouldn't freeze the machine when reinstalled.) Paul |
#18
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Win 7 Startup Problems
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#19
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Win 7 Startup Problems
On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 16:13:35 -0400, Paul
wrote: wrote: On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 12:45:06 -0400, Paul wrote: J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote: In message , writes: [] I took your advice and tested the memory. [and it's OK.] So I think the next thing is to replace the hard disk. I'd like your opinion on which way would insure the best result. The hard disk is 1TB with the System Reserved partitions plus Drives C:, D:, and E:. I have an identical new unused 1TB hard disk to replace the old one. My first thought, due to past experience, was to use the Windows 7 DVD to format and install Win 7 and to use it to create the other 2 partitions. Then I'd Restore the MR Image I made more than 2 weeks before the symptoms appeared. (I have older ones too, if necessary.) Which partitions did you image to make that image? If it was at least the hidden and C: partitions, then I don't think there's any need to format: restoring from the image is likely to create them anyway. And, if you're sure that image is free of the problem, restoring from it is going to be _much_ quicker than installing 7, doing all the updates, installing other software you had installed, and tweaking both the OS and the other software to how you like it. (I'm assuming you have the Macrium CD to boot from, and the image on a drive which the PC when booted from the CD can see.) You have nothing to lose by trying it, anyway, other than time! That is to say, put in your new unused drive, connect the drive [presumably an external drive accessed via USB?] with the image on, put in the Macrium boot CD, and boot; then, when it has booted, select the image to restore from, and the (new) drive to restore to, then do it, then shut down, remove the CD and image drive, and boot to see what happens. I suspect you'll find you have the partitions you included when you made that image. If that didn't include D: and E:, then their space will probably be unallocated on the drive. If that's so, I'd use the W7 utility at that stage to allocate them, then restore from them ... Then I'd take previously made images of D: and E: and restore them to the new hard disk. I feel pretty confident about this method. ... like that. (I'm not even sure you have to allocate them beforehand, or whether just restoring the D: and E: images would create them anyway. I just didn't want them to restore over the C: you'd just restored.) I've never used MR Cloning, but after looking at the manual that might be ok but I have a concern about the possibility of bringing something unwanted from the old (bad?) hard disk over to the new one. Wondering what you think, or have experienced. I've only used MR cloning once, and it went without a hitch; however, that was just to go from a drive I had no concerns about to a larger one. (After the cloning, I had the partitions - at the sizes - I had on the smaller one, with the rest unallocated; I just did some moving about, resizing, etc., using the normal W7 utility, to use all of the new disc.) However, I'm with you - if there's a chance there might be something rotten in the state of Denmark on your existing disc, I'd say "restore" from known good images to your new disc. Nothing to lose (except time) by trying, anyway! I would first examine the MRIMG file, to see what's been captured in it. If it only held a DATA partition for example, then we'd need to install Windows 7 on the disk too perhaps. Knowing what is inside the backup, is critical. If it includes System Reserved and C: , then chances are a simple "restore to new hard drive" from the MRIMG, is sufficient. Macrium has options to let you "look inside" an MRIMG. From the Restore menu, you should be able to Browse for MRIMG files. And the nice thing is, you can unplug the old drive (with the power off), plug in the new restored drive, and it should boot off the two-week-old image. And you have your choice of places to work. The new hard drive could be connected to a fully working machine, and restored in there. As long as you're careful not to overwrite the wrong disk drive. If you have a Macrium Rescue CD, then you don't actually need a Windows OS drive plugged into the machine where the restore is being done. New_Drive Backup_holding_Drive Optical drive (boots Macrium CD) That's enough to kick off the preparation of the New_Drive. Do not boot from the New_Drive, until it's reinstalled in the suspect machine, and it is by itself. Then, give it a shot and see what happens. You can bring over any left-over data files from the old disk later, as the need (or capability) arises. Paul Thanks to both of you. To answer some of your questions: The only partitions I image routinely is the System Reserved and Drive C: in one image (Partitions required to backup and restore Windows). This is what I would use to restore from. I keep these MR images on a separate physical drive in this computer and put a copy on an external USB HD for extra safety. The image I would make before starting would be Drive D: (lots of data and saved stuff). Drive E: would be easy to just backup somewhere else. I wasn't sure if the MR restore from image will create at least the System Reserved and Drive C: partitions automatically. I'm going to try that, as soon as I'm sure I have everything ready. I will disconnect or remove the existing (bad?) HD and install the new blank one in its place. Then boot the MR Rescue Disk to restore using the 02/25/18 MR image stored on Drive H: (physically different from the old HD). After booting the new disk I should be able to create the partitions D: and E: and restore them Hope to get to that tomorrow. Will let yo know how it goes. Thank You for your help! DC You can restore directly to a new hard drive, with no preparation of the new drive at all. The restore process creates the partitions first, then fills them up. ******* There was one older Asus motherboard, which could be "upset" by a new (blank) hard drive. It checked sector zero (the MBR), and if the MBR was not initialized, the BIOS would freeze and not boot. Needless to say, you need a second computer, to work with such a beast in the house. (You'd fix up the hard drive in a second computer, just enough so it wouldn't freeze the machine when reinstalled.) Paul Oh Happy Day! Looks like the new hard disk solved the problem. Used the MR rescue disk to restore the 02/25/18 image and it did create the system Reserve and Drive C: partitions. No problem there. Win 7 Disk Management took care of the other two partitions from unallocated space remaining. Before starting the disk swap, I made a MR image of my drive D: which contained tons of stuff including the My Documents folder which I had moved from drive C: a long time ago, for efficiency reasons. It took a long time and said it was successful. But looking in the My Documents folder scared the crap out of me. It was empty, except for 1 empty folder named "Reflect". Yikes! I mounted the image and found the same thing. The entire My documents folder was gone, including my iTunes library of over 1000 songs. Luckily, I had made a copy & paste backup of the entire drive D: 2 days ago and was able to use that instead of the image to put in the new drive D: So all is well. Thanks to you and every one else that helped me to get this fixed. |
#20
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Win 7 Startup Problems
On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 23:52:32 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , writes: [] The only partitions I image routinely is the System Reserved and Drive C: in one image (Partitions required to backup and restore Windows). This is what I would use to restore from. [] I wasn't sure if the MR restore from image will create at least the System Reserved and Drive C: partitions automatically. I'm going to try that, as soon as I'm sure I have everything ready. That worked for me: like you, I image the hidden and C: partitions only. I restored from such an image to a brand-new drive, and ended up with a drive which, when put back into the system from which the original image had been made, booted up into Windows. (It made partitions of the same size as they had been; since the new drive was bigger, I then used the normal utilities to resize C: (up a bit), and create D: to use the rest of the (new) disc. [] After booting the new disk I should be able to create the partitions D: and E: and restore them I don't _image_ my D:, I just copy it (using SyncToy to speed the process), so that I can get at the copy if I need to without using Macrium to get inside image files. But that is fairly irrelevant to the current discussion. Hope to get to that tomorrow. Will let yo know how it goes. Good luck! Thank You for your help! DC JPG All is well. Thanks for your help. To see the details, read my reply to Paul. DC |
#21
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Win 7 Startup Problems
On Sun, 18 Mar 2018 12:06:46 -0500, Paul in Houston TX
wrote: wrote: On Sat, 17 Mar 2018 17:11:22 -0500, Paul in Houston TX wrote: Sorry I didn't see your question before. It's a desktop. Intel motherboard DZ77GA-70K. Just re-retrieved messages from before my start of this thread, but don't see a msg from the "pjp" you mentioned. If his details are worth my knowing would you please copy them and paste them into a reply to me? I will shut down now to check the items you offered. PJP wrote on 3/17/2018 4:39 PM: "Sounds to me like it maybe a hardware problem. Hard disk going bad and sometimes a specific sector (which means some specific file) can't be read or is incorrectly led. First case system probably stalls second case system probably crashes." All is well. See my reply to Paul for the details. Thanks for your help. DC |
#22
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Win 7 Startup Problems
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#23
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Win 7 Startup Problems
On Tue, 20 Mar 2018 21:29:10 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote: In message , writes: Oh Happy Day! Looks like the new hard disk solved the problem. Used the MR rescue disk to restore the 02/25/18 image and it did create the system Reserve and Drive C: partitions. No problem there. Win 7 Disk Management took care of the other two partitions from unallocated space remaining. That's what I'd have expected. (Just out of curiosity, why do you have _two_ data partitions?) In total, I have 3 hard disks: Disk 1: System partition and Drive C: Disk 1: Drive D: For data and video downloaded or captured from DVR. Disk 1: Drive E: For backup copies of MR images. Disk 2: Drive F: For News and Email using Forte Agent. Disk 2: Drive G: For in-process video and other misc. stuff. Disk 2: Drive H: For Primary storage of MR images. Disk 3: 1TB drive for duplicate backups and whatever. I also have 2 1TB USB external drives for backup, several flash drives and a bunch of DVDs for backup Talk about redundant... found the same thing. The entire My documents folder was gone, including my iTunes library of over 1000 songs. Luckily, I had made a copy & paste backup of the entire drive D: 2 days ago and was able to use that instead of the image to put in the new drive D: So all is well. By "copy and paste", I presume you mean just a plain copy (not using Macrium to pack everything up into an image). Yes. Personally, I can't see a lot of advantage in using Macrium (or anything else) to make an _image_ of a just data partition, unless the compression is important to you. I'm willing to forgo the compression to be able to access the files in the copy just with Explorer. I agree. (YMMV.) I still cycle between two or three such copies, using SyncToy to speed the copying process (it only copies new and changed files). Thanks to you and every one else that helped me to get this fixed. You're welcome! Glad you're up and running again. Don't forget to make a new image (of hidden and C:, and some sort of backup/copy of D: and E soon (-:! Done. Thanks, DC |
#24
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Win 7 Startup Problems
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